


Διανταιαι (or: Three Points Where Two Sides Meet)

by SandrC



Series: Balance My Deeds With My Misdeeds [27]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Hello hyperfocus my old friend, Little Mermaid AU, No spoilers in the tags, Slow Burn, Tags May Change, because ily Disney but I like some of the things in HCAs story thank you, iDK tho, if I can help it, im throwing salt at myself as well, maybe smut idk, maybe sometimes every sequential Monday, moving from only one wip to two because I hate myself lmao, no one asked for this but everyone needs it, platonic before romantic, platonic relationships are important, the Hans Christian Anderson version, tw before each chapter that needs it, updates every other Monday, vague unsettling body horror, what do you mean Kravitz has a personality outside of Taako?!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-12 00:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10478433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandrC/pseuds/SandrC
Summary: Come, gentle pow'rs, well born, benignant, fam'd, Atropos, Lachesis, and Clotho nam'd:Unchang'd, aerial, wand'ring in the night, restless, invisible to mortal fight;Fate all-producing all-destroying hear, regard the incense and the holy pray'r;Propitious listen to these rites inclin'd, and far avert distress with placid mind.—Odysseus(Or: an ancient man-eating beast is very keen on the idea of seeing the physical plane as its inhabitants do and seeks a deal with death. Somehow, she falls in love.)





	1. Ō, A': Νυκτὸς

**Author's Note:**

> **TW: some vague body horror and descriptions of time as having been/is being/will be simultaneous and yet separate all at once (so disassociation or something? Idk I felt like it needed a warning.)**
> 
>  
> 
> What do you mean I shouldn't start a new series?! What do you mean I shouldn't make it update every other Monday?! What do you mean I'm overextending myself?! www!! Y'all are silly!!! *side-eyes piles of other things haunting me*
> 
> Anyway, here's the Little Mermaid AU that no one asked for and everyone needed. EVERYONE. Also I love Julia and will protect her with all my life.
> 
> Also also: okay so apparently I'm hitting the Greek Mythos a bit hard lmao.
> 
> Also also also: that poem up in the summary is by Odysseus. It's an actual hymn to the Moirai—triumvirate goddesses of fate. I liked it so sorry that y'all had to refer to the tags go get any info on this fic. (Not really www)
> 
> Also also also also: I have...a weakness for...the trope where one character is hiding their true nature from the one they love and eventually get found out and it goes a bit tits up. It's a weakness of mine.
> 
> The final also *jamming electric keyboard solo*: I should be sleeping. I am not. Shame on me.
> 
> (Sorry for the tense changes in this one but it's gonna be past-tense save for some fate/time fuckery. Istus is, inherently, someone who exists in all time simultaneously as the triumvirate, but as the singular, she tends to exist in the now. So whenever Istus is, she is in present tense, regardless of the tense of the surrounding work. Also...sorry if this is verbose but damn if I don't fucking love purple prose. Please lemme know if anything is difficult to understand.)
> 
>  **This week's chapter sponsored by Sonic Drive-In.**  
>  At Sonic Drive-In, we love it when you come to our location five minutes before we close, order five different meals on five different tickets, order half a dozen half-priced shakes, park as far away from the front door as possible, send your carhop back and forth half a dozen times for various sundries, pay your carhop in coins, demand your penny back in change, don't tip them, and then send your food back more than once. We really appreciate you making our job harder.
> 
> Sonic Drive-In: fuck you and fuck the car you rode in on.

**Part 0, Chapter 1: Night**

* * *

 

In a time outside of time, in a space outside of space, known only as the Etherial Plane where the pantheon resides, three women engaged/engage/will engage in their craft. They wove/weave/will weave a large tapestry covered in intricate details, fine gilt threads that shimmered/shimmer/will shimmer with something more than opalescence and far beyond mortal understanding.

One of the three women was an elder, dark wrinkled skin smattered with patches of glowing stars of white and blue that twinkled independent of one another. Her gaze was sharp as she held the spindle in her hands and guided the thread of the tapestry from conception to creation, feeding the warp and shedding it, the warp held taut by weights of mortal sins, a soft and gentle smile on her lips.

The second of the three women is younger than the first, her skin considerably smoother than her elder. One of her eyes is clouded and pale, smattered with a galaxy of milky stars that seems to spread out onto her dark skin, while the other is keen and sharp. She guides the threads of what is through the raised warps, forming the pattern of life by racing the shuttle against time and space and all that will happen.

The third woman, far younger and more fair than her companions, will clip and will shear the threads of what will be at their end with a pair of white-gold shears shaped like an intricate dusky turtle-dove, making sure that they are wound. She will batten the ends, taking in the fell to the cloth roll and moving the past of the tapestry to the present to the future. She will have a figure that many find desirable, with her dark skin—speckled with small stars that will glimmer with gentle light—and fair hair that will cascade down her back and across her shoulders in almost eternally rippling waves.

And while there was/is/will be those three goddesses, presiders of time and space, of what was/is/will be, there is also only one goddess. She is all of them and none of them. She is where only one of them is, the other two were and will be. She stands proud and operates the loom alone and not alone, hands flying as she catalogues all that exists on every plane ever until the end of time. Her countenance shifts and wavers—never set in one shape for long—from young to old, short to tall, thin to fat. The only constant in her appearance is her dark skin—a map of the stars that move as they do below and above—and her fair hair—the trail of comets preceding the mass, cold and ephemeral.

She hums as she weaves, finding joy in the work she's doing. Her hands are deft and precise, cutting dead threads, tying loose ends, gently guiding errant patterns back to their place. She's content with her kismet. It was/is/will always be hers.

Behind her, out of line of sight, tearing the space beyond space open in a way that was akin to a gaping wound—wrong and bleeding and gutted and out of place—was a woman who was also a thousand women but only one woman all at once. Her form coalesced from the immeasurable number of fierce, cathonic daemons that flittered forth from the rip in space outside of space, into a skeleton—sharp fingers, pale bones, human but also bird but also something innately not right from the build and the pallor—and from there, into a woman, her skin a sickly pale that glowed with the bioluminescence of ancient mushrooms and her hair, darker than the absence of light. She was a stark contrast to the weaver, a larger corvid skull pulled over her head and obscuring most of her face, her eyes black marbles set in porcelain bone and luminous flesh stretched thin over a frame that is just adjacent of elven. Her hand ghosted over the back of the weaver's neck, chitinous nails raising goosebumps as they drew a sharp gasp from her.

"Raven Queen," the weaver says, her eyes never leaving her work.

"Istus," she replied, kissing her nape and lovingly nibbling on her ear.

Istus leans into the Raven Queen's embrace and gently kisses her back, mouth finding mouth through/around/beneath the skull. "You tempt me."

"You wouldn't do anything you didn't want to. It is ordained." The mockery in the Raven Queen's voice was pleasant and light, juxtaposed by her raspy croak.

"It is ordained," Istus agrees, her soft voice emanating from everywhere and nowhere all at once, "but you still try."

"It is my nature."

"As it is mine to resist your," a few kisses are exchanged, broken with genuine joy and love that spans space and time and planes and jobs, "...cunning charm."

"My skilled turtle-dove."

"My brilliant corvid."

The Raven Queen rested her head against Istus' shoulder and watched her weave. The movement is rapid and practiced, but thought out so far in advance that no one could ever see the pattern even one month ahead of now. Color after color after thread after thread sped past her vision almost too fast for her to see. There, in the weft, was a tawny thread that spiraled from a crimson thread that split into a million others and formed both weft and weave. "I know this one."

"As do I." Istus does not look away from her work but the Raven Queen can feel her gaze turn to her inquisitively. "And I will."

"I have seen this one before. Not just here but there, in my Plane. It watches. It waits." The Raven Queen fluttered, a million small forms, one solid, one ghosting bones of a goddess, and appeared next to the loom itself. Istus continues her work, imperceptibly bothered by her proximity to all that was/is/will be. "It wishes to learn. It wishes to grow."

"I cannot shift a thread any more than you cannot shift the scales. What was, was, what is, is, what will be, will be, and were we to interfere then we would bear the brunt of the displaced karma." Her face, voice, and body are impassive. She is a rock. She is inevitable. "If I were to take this from weft to weave then I would change the whole of the tapestry. It is ordained by forces far beyond our understanding that this thread shall be in the back, passive and inactive."

"But what if I were to shift it?"

"A leopard cannot change its spots," Istus is harsh, a snap in her tone that cracks across all of the Etherial Plane and resonates fear in mortal hearts.

"Age does grey its fur," was the Raven Queen's retort. It wasn't anger that drove her, but curiosity. "And are we not all given free will."

"Those not bound to the chariot, as we are."

"And this thread, though not mortal, has free will. Would it be able to change its place if it were given a choice to?"

"Pan would not allow it. None of them would. We are small and disliked, you and I, and if I were to allow this and you were to continue this train of thought, we would most likely be taxed for our involvement. No matter how small." She gestures a bit to the opalescent threads that shimmer in the weft, constant and eternal, and shifts her grip on the shuttle, never faltering. "They are many to our few. Giving this a chance that others are not afforded would be... _imbalanced_."

"And should I care? My following is small enough that there is little they can take from me."

"Your champion?" An arced eyebrow and a quirk of the upper lip. Istus is amused. A rare sight indeed.

"If it would be so."

"Then I cannot stop you. You have far more freedom than I."

The Raven Queen nuzzled Istus' neck and bit her nape gently. The dark skin, dappled and fine, purpled beneath the pressure of her fangs, though none of her silver blood is spilled. "I would," she huskily moaned in her ear, " _so_ love to tempt Fate."

"Then play your pieces. Just know that I will send the heavens down to stop you." Her smile is wistful, far away and unfocused. "It is ordained."

"I have faith."

"I have truth."

"Than you and I stand in opposition?" The Raven Queen pulled away from her paramour and watched her work, chest clenched.

"A game of chess between us."

"It is ordained." She drew away, her pale-dark form tearing open another wound in the Etherial Plane. "I will wait for you."

"We have eternity."

"Far less than that," the Raven Queen commented.

" _Far_ less than that," Istus agrees.

As the Raven Queen slipped back to the Astral Plane where she governed, Istus watches the tawny thread far in the will be. She watches its twists and turns. She watches it knot and fray. She watches it far into its arrival to the fell and smiles. "It is ordained," she whispers.

And it was/is/will be.

* * *

 

**End Part 0**


	2. A', A': Φίξ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW: body horror and maybe sorta unreality shit? IDK**
> 
> Big shoutout to everyone who was kind enough to leave a comment or kudos! Y'all are the real MVPs!!!
> 
> Decided I'd update when I please but deffo one every two weeks at least by Monday. A soft-update schedule, if you will.
> 
> But yeah, I cranked this one the fuck out after I finished Jump's chapter. Hell yeah. It was so good.
> 
> Quick moment to suggest: please donate to MaxFunDrive because TAZ: Nights is so so good and also Lin Manuel Miranda is in the latest one and it's so choice?!!!!
> 
> Praise be the McElroys for This week's The The Adventure Zone Zone and for owning up to some accidentally bungling of things. Praise be the death of Chalupa! Lup is better anyway. Also a big S/O to those boys for trying to be careful when building their world and their characters and embracing their fandom. Please don't idolize them and then pull mile-long receipts on them because fuck you I just wanna fucking enjoy something thankyouverymuch.
> 
> Um...one last thing...I wanted to say thanks for at least giving this a go because, despite me writing this for me, it's the feedback that keeps me going. And I really appreciate how much you liked my vaguely Etherial and oddly Eldritch descriptions of the goddesses. I think they're a combination of everything that everyone ever believed about them, so their forms are constantly in flux. Istus especially.
> 
> (And a big S/O to [coffee](http://bitter-like-coffee.tumblr.com) for being hella excited about this and for drawing Phix! :3 Thanks bunches!)

**Part One, Chapter One: Phix**

Phix was, in her heart of hearts, a curious being. When one was an asker of riddles and probably the most prolific in her field, seeking new things to know was second nature. It came to her as easily as breathing. So now, as she lounged in front of a large, reflective pool of what would be considered water if water existed in the Astral plane—which it didn't in the true sense of the word—she watched.

The Planes of Existence were in a constant dance with one another. Twelve separate disks of being with twelve sets of rules and twelve different types of natural beings. But, the perk of there being twelve of them, all unique and so on, is that it was easy to peer into them one at a time. Especially when one had access to a pool that could attune its vibrations to that of one Plane at a time.

As she reached down and brushed her paw against the surface of the pool, it rippled and changed color, tuning in to the Plane she wished to see. A deep beryl spread from the center of the ripples, pushing outward and revealing a world far beyond the Prime Material Plane. The Plane of Thought was buzzing with a million different new ideas, filled with technology and magic working side-by-side to power large airships and horseless chariots. In their hands, the mortals of that realm held small devices with more knowledge than the largest archival library, and they simply watched a recording of small kittens playing. Bored, she brushed her paw against the pool again and a pink tourmaline sheen chased away the emerald.

The Plane of Magic was different than the Plane of Thought in that, while technology existed there, they didn't need it because the inhabitants of that Plane were formless beings of magic. They floated about, conjuring everything from nothing, and passing by the Material Plane through small windows and siphons made by magic users. Some of them stopped and stared at Phix, knowing that she was there. Unnerved, as she was wont to be when she was spotted by extra-planar entities, she quickly brushed away the pink and replaced it with a metallic hematite glow.

The Abyssal Plane came into view, a deep and mysterious Plane of six hundred and sixty six rings and layers, one on top of another, that were divided by reigning Demon Lord. To most beings, the Abyssal Plane was a place of horror, terror and torment abound when the demons got ahold of your soul and body and bent it to their will. Gesturing lazily, she panned from one ring to another, passing by the rippling illusory hall of Fraz-Urb'luu, the grand mansion of Graz'zt, and the impenetrable darkness of the Great Mother. Soon she rested on a ring of large wilderness that Demogorgon ruled over, the warring forms of her siblings tearing one another to pieces were visceral and gory but she found comfort in it. She missed home. She missed her family.

Pushing the nostalgia aside, she instead dismissed the hematite of the Abyssal Plane and replaced it with the iridescent, almost oily, rainbow coalescence of the Prime Material Plane. This was her favorite. It was a realm that was only limited by physical forms, and even then only just because even spirits and gods could step foot in and live there. The beings that inhabited that Plane were magic and material and technological and astral all in one. They were conundrums. They were amazing. They were terrific. She loved watching them.

She panned across the Plane, taking in the sights of the mortals living there, doing what they do, being who they are. She saw large cities, towering high above the hills and mountains of surrounding areas, that bustled with energy and work. She saw small villages, nestled between landmarks, where even the smallest person was noticed. She watched guilds of thieves and merchants and warriors. She watched wizards study, sorcerers channel, bards play, and warlocks honor their pact. She watched rangers hunt, clerics heal, and merchants sell. There was very little rest. It was unnerving to see somewhere so busy.

As she absentmindedly moved over portions of the Material Plane that she had seen through the pool a dozen or more times, the deep wrongness of a rip in the planes caught her eye. She stopped, sitting erect, ears flicking forward to catch every last word being said, her pupils dilating. Out of the rift, a deep seeping sapphire glow that leeched from the surrounding colors, stepped a form she knew well. An elegant man, robed in black and dressed in the finest antiquated fashion, tucked a strand of curly hair over his ear. He pulled out a book, summoning it from a pocket dimension to the left of behind him, and flipped through it, tongue poking out in concentration. He hummed a tune no one knew but him as he sought out a name. And then he brightened and snapped the book shut, slipping it back in its dimension.

" _Okay_ ," he sighed sharply, shoulders tensing and then relaxing as he prepared himself for his job, "you _got_ this Krav."

Phix smiled at that. Thanatos had a strange habit of talking to himself—something he insisted was left over from a chemical imbalance issue he had when he had been living—but it was, at its heart, endearing. She toyed with the thought of calling him through his Stone of Farspeech but watching him do his job was the most interesting part of her day, sadly enough.

She watched as he summoned the Queen's messengers one after another. The ravens and crows and magpies swooped low and perched on every available inch of him. He handed them each a name and a location, etched in the oldest tongue in the Astral Plane on a gold coin, and they flew away with their marks. "Okay...," he sighed, tensing and then relaxing his shoulders, "that's the forgotten. Now to the marked." In a movement that could only be considered graceful by someone who _hadn't_ seen him fuck it up a million times before, he waved his hands about in the air, forming a large summoning circle using the magic gifted to him by the Queen, and pulled his steed out of the nothing. And then it ran him over.

Phix's tail twitched in amusement as she watched him wrestle with the large, quasi-real horselike creature that was currently trying to get him to play fetch with his baton. Thanatos, for all the pompous and circumstantial airs he put on, was probably the biggest dweeb ever. In the history of ever. Forever and always. She laughed, a thrumming rumble of ' _hurr-hurr-hurr'_ that bared her rows and rows of manticorian teeth, as Thanatos finally managed to snatch his baton back.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Kerberos? This is _not_ a toy and you are _not_ a dog!" He waved the baton in front of the strange, skeletal horselike steed. " _...right now..._ ," he added as an aside. "Now manifest some fur and riding gear so I don't have to sit between your shoulder-blades again! I couldn't walk straight for _days_!" Kerberos made a strange sound, a chuffing whinny that had no echo but cut through everything around it and could be felt for miles. " _Don't_ you _dare_! Fur. Riding gear. I don't care if it's a riding blanket, just something to keep my ass _intact_!" He lectured. No dice. He ranted. No dice. He pleaded. No dice. It wasn't until he grit his teeth, long since melted from flesh to pure bone—a true champion of the Queen, with his body so close to a mortal build but just wrong enough—that he managed to get anything from Kerberos. He had a bird skull with a human jaw. Thin, stretched bones in his arms and hands that formed wings that could grasp and pull and the memory of flight. Eyes that shouldn't be there, dots of light deep within the depth of Death. He grinned with teeth in a beak that unhinged like a barn owl's.

 **THE QUEEN WOULD BE DISPLEASED.**  His voice—an echo of a memory, pulling from within the desire to run, to flee, to scream in fear and collapse, to submit—slipped from a non-existent throat. Kerberos snorted and sniffled. **YES. I THINK SHE WOULD MOST LIKELY BE HIGHLY DISAPPOINTED WITH HER FAVORITE GUARD. SHE MIGHT EVEN GIVE THE EXTRA BONES AND YUMMY THINGS TO THE ERINYES. YOU KNOW HOW MUCH MAEGARA LOVES MARROW. AND ALEKTO WOULD JUST REVEL IN RUBBING YOUR NOSE IN YOUR INCOMPETENCE.**  His tone was teasing as he wheedled and dragged the truth along by its hair.  **AND SHE'D PROBABLY GIVE ME ONE OF THE MARES OF THRACE AS A REPLACEMENT. YOU KNOW HOW OUR QUEEN CANNOT ABIDE FOOLISHNESS.**

 _Then you would have been long gone, dear Death._ Phix snorted in amusement, distorting the surface of the pond with ripples that showed the was/is/will be of that place. She closed her eyes to prevent herself from trespassing on Istus' realm. The goddess, lover of the Queen and mistress over the flow of all that exists on all Planes, was kind but not lenient. Her tapestry was law and any who would view it without her permission is both violating her and breaking a sacred geas. It would not end well for anyone. She knew that more than most.

Kerberos snuffled and snorted, his tail—a whip-like string of bones that were tipped in spines that dripped with a vicious-looking toxin—thrashing back and forth. Then, almost in a resigned manner, pale white fur crept across his body, starting from his back and covering every inch of him with a taut carpet of fine hair. His spines poked through his fur but the ones on his back retracted to make way for a soft blanket stuffed with down. His teeth gnashed as he stared down Thanatos, who was grinning like the Maenad that caught the man, with eyes that were hot coals stuffed into a rotting corpse. Thanatos pulled his own skin back over himself and tugged his cloak over his head.

"Are you _done_ being stubborn?" Kerberos shrieked and stomped his hoof. " _Good_. Now why don't you and I get that mark, yeah? Then when we get home, I'll let you play with Sisyphus or Prometheus. Maybe I'll even convince Charon to ferry you to the shores of Lethe to nibble on the lost ones. Would you like that?" His pale steed's tail whipped back and forth excitedly. "Then _tally ho!_ " And off they went, faster than light but slower than the weave of life. They blurred and Phix grew nauseous. She quieted the pool and stretched.

 _I cannot abide the way he travels,_ she thought. _Far too fast and far too much of a strain on one's spirit and body. Much better to claw your way from one place to another. But Thanatos will be Thanatos and I will be myself._

She flexed her wings, flaring them out and relieving the tension that had crept into her joints, and let her claws pull up some of the ground beneath her. Her tail tasted the air and she listened intently for the ambient sounds of the Astral Plane. Screaming, howling, pain, suffering, those were _not_ the sounds of the Astral Plane. Those were the sounds that mortals _believed_ that the Astral Plane would contain. They believed it was hell. They believed it was torment.

They were wrong.

The Astral Plane, instead, was filled with sounds of life and laughter and enjoyment. Families reunited, memories revisited, lost loved ones found, songs long lost, stories forgotten, all of it was heard and it surrounded everyone, bringing with it the feeling of belonging and loving and knowing contentment. Here, where Phix lay, was quiet and she liked it that way.

Silence meant thought. Silence meant learning. Silence meant that she could organize her brain in a way that made sense. One after another after another, a thought parade, promoting the important and culling the weak.

She spread her wings and flew far and fast, soaring over the rivers that crisscrossed the Plane, the mountains that held those with adventure in their hearts, the deserts for those that wandered but weren't lost, and even the marshes that housed horrors that wished to be left alone. She crossed over every last little bit of the Plane that was now her home and lit down on the pedestal that indicated the beginning of the Queen's Roost.

The Roost was a towering structure, spires and spindles reaching towards the sky that did not exist and the sun that did not shine, made of jet and ivory and opal and amber that shimmered and flowers with a light with no source. The Queen's murder flew about, circling the tips of her Roost's towers, and let out their raucous cries echoing against cliffs that were not there and screaming for lives that had not ended. In front of Phix was a pathway made of bones, polished and engraved with runes blessing their owners and all who walk on them and damning anyone who would dare deface them. It wound upward against gravity and led to the front entrance of the Roost. She followed the path as she thought, hemming and hawing to herself while her thoughts fought her attempt to organize.

When she reached the door of the Roost, she sat back on her haunches and waited. Soon her patience was rewarded as a skeletal kenku slid open a small slot and peered at her inquisitively.

"Allow me to enter," she demanded.

The kenku replied in every language and no language all at once. **BUSINESS?** Her ears flattened against her head.

"I wish to see the Queen."

 **REASON?** The kenku screamed.

"I have a question for Her."

**WHAT?**

"I do not want to share that with you," she crossly sneered at the birdlike undead.

**PRICE!**

"A riddle?"

 **PRICE!!!** It repeated, urgently, _excitedly_. Her eyes crossed with the pressure it exerted.

She rolled her eyes and pulled a random one from her memory. "Thirty white horses upon a red hill. First they gnash, then they clash, then they stand still."

The kenku tilted its head as it puzzled over it. It clacked its beak in thought. Then it flapped the vestigial wing-bones,  **DUNNO! ANSWER?!**

Phix shook her head to clear her ears. "Let me in. Upon exit I will reveal the answer."

 **NO! ANSWER!** It was _not_ happy. She didn't care.

"You will get the answer when I enter." Her voice was metered, slow and carefully spoken through clenched teeth. "Allow me in."

The kenku considered this for a long while. Time was meaningless when you were dead or immortal but it didn't mean that Phix didn't have things to to and places to be. Her tail hissed in irritation. It generally was less controlled than she was. As if sensing her frustration and her desire to eat him, the kenku trilled. **ENTER! THEN ANSWER!**

The door to the Roost swung open, screaming as hinges in need of oil and care, and the large foyer that ran into the deeper parts of the Roost was exposed to the ambient, sourceless light of the Astral Plane. Purple amethyst and azure sapphire flames sparkled in sconces made of horns of long-dead beasts. An ornate rug whose home country had long since fell to war, its people wiped out in a genocide by more 'civilized' races, spanned from entrance to horizon. She momentarily allowed her mind to absorb the details of the Roost—ever changing and ever growing, it was _always_ new when she visited the Queen—but turned her focus to the kenku doorman.

 **ANSWER!** It demanded.

"Teeth. _Human_ teeth." She smirked as the kenku stomped in irritation.

**CHEAT!!! TEETH?! _CHEAT_!!! WE DON'T HAVE THEM!!!**

"You took a riddle as an entrance fee, wingless one, so why don't you graciously close the door behind me before you sate my hunger." It balked at her threat but refused to move. She leered and bared her teeth in a cruel display of power. "It is in my nature to _eat_ the losers of my game."

 _There_. Fear. Rolling off it in droves, she could smell it wafting from the marrow deep within the thin bones of the birdlike keeper. It hopped away and worked the pulley system that operated the door, silently muttering to itself in noises that were less chaotic than its use of speech.

"I thought not." She padded onward, allowing the thrum of magic and death wash over her.

Phix did not _hate_ the Raven Queen. She was not the reason she was here, away from her family and her prey, nor was she keeping her here against her will. She _chose_ to be here. She wanted this... _once_.

No, Phix rather found the Queen to be more desirable as a _partner_ than a foe. She was a formidable being, existing alive and dead, whole and shattered, here and gone, all at once. She was beauty in corpses and beauty in life. She was feathers and bone and chitin and leather and fangs and claws and talons and eyes. Millions of eyes and none at once. More teeth than any being ever held in their maw in existence. She was both Etherial and Abyssal, Astral and Corporeal, Magic and Physical. She was everything and nothing.

She was Phix's dream and her nightmare.

Phix had once heard those on the Material Plane describe a phenomenon called 'gestalt perception' in which the brain arranges things that are generally unrelated into something that is one. "The whole is other than the sum of its parts," as she had heard said once. Even the dead said that, though they usually replaced the word 'other' with 'greater', to which a very irritable human would almost always chime in that they were wrong and oftentimes tossed the word ' _scheißkerlhau_ ' with bitter resignation.

The Queen was like that. She was pieces and parts of everything everyone had ever believed her to be but she was also the whole that she always was and always would be. She was fractal and brilliant but resolute and devouring. She was hunger and famine and glut and glamor. She was all that killed and all that rose from death. She was a bird, a cat, a wolf, a snake, a man, a woman, a demon, a human, a spider, a void, a monster, an idea, a being. She was and was not. She was everything and nothing at the same time. She was the ultimate riddle.

But now? Now a whole Plane rivaled the Queen for her attention. Centuries ago, long before Phix found the puddle that allowed her to watch the Planes beyond here, she visited the Queen at every available moment. She asked questions and sought answers. She doted on Her and lavished Her with affection. She showered Her in gifts and trinkets that she knew would please Her. Now she visited maybe once or twice if it struck her fancy. She wondered if the Queen missed her.

At the end of the foyer lay a large arch. This was one of the few consistent things about the Roost, the Perch before the Dais. It was the least lavish thing in the entire Roost, made of a pale pine that was softly brushed with the blood of races that had long been forgotten on any Plane but this one. Their war had been deserved, as they sought only to devour all that was/is/will be, and they now were only spoken about in coded songs and alluded to in glasswork left in abandoned temples. The Hunger, they had been called. Their blood was something no one of the pantheon could replicate. Shimmering ichor that reflected your sins back to you, revealing all the darkness you were hiding, bringing forth things you weren't even aware of. It was the ultimate veritas and could easily shatter the Perceived Self. Phix tried to not stare when she went through the archway. Last time she had seen enough to make her stay in this Plane. Last time she had seen all that she ever needed to and more.

Passing through the Perch, she padded towards the Dais and paused before the threshold. She bent her front legs and dipped her head in a graceful bow. Her wings spread out wide and even her tail averted its eyes. She did not speak. The Queen had to initiate. It always was as such.

"Phix, child of My desires and My enemies. What brings you to My Dais on this eve?" Her voice was, as always, everything and nothing.

"I have...well, my Queen, I have an inquiry. It regards the watching pool and a few other things." She didn't raise her eyes any higher than her Queen's feet. "If it pleases you, I would kindly like to ask answers of you. I will offer my time and my presence and my essence of you desire recompense."

"Phix, winged one of many questions, what is it you wish to know? You are well aware that I always have time for you." She sounded like She was smiling. Phix gently lifted her head to take in Her face.

"Why did you allow me to remain among the dead, despite me not being so?" Her voice was piteous but she remained resolute. This was just the beginning of learning and a hunger for knowledge _had_ to be sated.

The Raven Queen, her resplendent form flickering into a thousand demons of a million eyes and a billion teeth and a trillion screams, giggled. "You _asked_. There are very few who enter My Plane and ask to stay. Some come to take. Some come to kill. Some come to learn. You came to stay. It was... _intriguing_. You intrigue Me."

A flush lit up her face, black blood causing olive skin to deepen in hue, cool tones highlighting her freckles. " _Th_ -you are kind, my Queen."

"So formal," She laughed again, a chorus of birds joining in her jubilation. "You have more questions."

"Yes. I do." Phix pulled up from her bow and settled comfortably down at the Queen's feet. "Did you know about the pool?"

"The mirror pool is something I put in this Plane for all who wished to see. Your search for knowledge led you to the pool and you used it as it was meant to be used. Watching. _Learning_." Her eyes flickered about her head, open and closed and more than ever needed. She watched Phix with more platonic adoration than she had ever shown anyone before. She was waiting. She was patient.

"You're very kind." Charity was not Her strong point but Phix would take it where it came.

"Continue."

"What lies beyond these Planes?" It was a hard question. Far harder than before.

"Ah," her form coalesced into a million tiny speckles of glimmering souls and shimmering spirits. "That is a hard question to answer. I will ask a question in return: what makes up you? Your form. What you are."

Phix mulled that over for a moment. It was a hard one. A deep recollection of the Physical Self. After a long period of silence, Phix found an answer. Whether or not it's the answer is unclear. "What makes up me, in my physical form, is what makes up my mother and father. It is what makes up the whole of everything."

" _Everything_?" The Queen raises an eyebrow and with it went a thousand echoes of eyebrows and small feathers. "Everything _where_? Material? Astral? Etherial? You're being very vague, Phix of the wandering mind."

"Everything of the magical and material. What makes magic is the ether that streams through all of what uses the magic within. What makes material is elements, building blocks. Smaller than sand, than the eye can perceive. Smaller than anything anyone could look at and know." She was gaining ground now, more sure of herself than before.

The Raven Queen clapped happily. A hundred hands echoing with applause for lost lives. " _Exactly_. What makes up this," she gestured about in a circle, "is the same as what makes up this," she conjured up an imitation of the Planar System, dancing disks in eternal movement. "A sum of parts."

"So...beyond the Planar System is an infinite amount of other Planar Systems that make up a reality? And beyond that is more?" Her pupils were blown, so excited, so happy. She had to pause and ground herself. She came for a reason.

" _Possibly_ ," she smiled, a quirk of the lip indicated a myriad of emotions. "Any more?"

"Oh! _Yes_!" Now she was confident and comfortable in the presence of her Queen again and could easily ask what she came for. "My Queen...would I be allowed to visit the Material Plane?"

An interesting thing happened then. Her form went erratic, the thousand demons, the bones of an ancient, the birdlike entity, the angels of wrath, the fiery vengeance, the cloud of eyes, the echoes of lives, the masquerade. Then, almost as soon as the erratic flickering of her visage started, it ended and what was left was an unused and archaic form of the Queen. She was a large bird, towering over almost everything, the tip of her feathers touching the spire. From her wings came boney spurs, twitching fingers that grasped at all she could handle. Her head didn't end in a beak but a face, humanoid and porcelain like a Noh mask, pristine and prim with no mouth and no expression. She had six wings and no legs and long tail feathers that curled upwards as if reaching to the lack of sky above. When she spoke again, face featureless and cold, her head hinged upwards and revealed a million rows of jagged teeth, like glass shards shoved into cooling tar, with silver ichor coating her gums. " _That_ , my dearest darling Phix, is what I was expecting."

" _You—?_ " She choked, afraid. This was nothing she had seen the Queen become before. This was inherently and viscerally horrifying. "Expecting?"

"I did not allow you into my Roost with no knowledge of your gazing. Darling Phix, weaver of words, you are as easy to read as you were when you first came." Her voice, same as ever, didn't match her terrific appearance. It was _beyond_ unnerving. "I know your heart of heart. It is seeking but it is lonely. It is solitary but it is hiding. You want so much. You _need_ so much. That is why you sought Me. That is why you accompanied Me. That is why you sought My presence."

" _I_ —"

"Death does not only know what has been. Death also knows Fate." The innuendo was not lost on Phix. She blushed and her fur puffed up in embarrassment.

"That is—!"

"Answer me this, little Phix," the Queen used Her wing spurs to scuttle towards her, "what would you do there, on the Material Plane? Devour those who could not answer your riddles? Torment and terrify the mortals? Get yourself sent back in a more... _permanent_ fashion?" She tilted Her head and a previously unseen eye opened up to stare at Phix. "You wonder and you seek but you do not ask the _Why_ of things or the _What_ of things. Far beyond your How are What and Why and those make the How and if you seek one, you seek them all."

Phix's tail was between her legs now, whimpering and scared. This was more of the Queen than she had seen before and she didn't know how to feel. "I would—"

"The Hunger resides within you. It is its intrinsic nature to glut itself. The ichor revealed your desire. You _know_. You _fear_. Dear, feathered Phix, how would you bind your Hunger? How would you seal the opalescence within you so that even the darkness within could not flee? How would you fight your nature?"

" _I_ —!"

Sensing the need for excitement was over, the Raven Queen shifted and flickered back to a more comforting form, the woman of birds, indescribably fearsome and yet hauntingly beautiful. She pet Phix's fur gently and softly. "I do not wish to accost you or make you abandon your desire. I simply want you to _think_ before you act. It is something you need to learn. You're very bad at it."

"I...understand, my Queen," Phix stood up, head hanging, and reverently bowed to the Raven Queen. "I will think before I act." She turned and padded towards the Perch once more.

"And Phix?" She looked back at the Queen, who gave her the best soft smile she could drum up. "A riddle is worth an entrance _and_ an egress."

"Thank you, my Queen."

"Come back when you know!"

"I will, my Queen." And the foyer devoured her form, sinking into the horizon that sank farther back into sapphire and amethyst sconces and farther back as the door closed behind her and farther back as she took to the sky and flew and farther back as she fled to think, shame and fear keeping her alert.

And farther back as she lit down next to the pool and defiantly turned her back to it, refusing to look in it until she knew. Until she had her answer. Until she visited the Queen again.

**End Chapter One**

**Author's Note:**

> Like this work? Wanna scream into the eternal void with me? Wanna yell about Griffin jossing our ideas and killing our darlings? Then hit me up at [my Tumblr](http://thesleepiestsheepy.tumblr.com) or [my Twitter](http://twitter.com/ArrowAceP)! My DMs/IMs are almost always open and I'm usually pretty chill!


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